If Chicago can raise $50 million a year using 100 cameras to catch red-light runners, I’m for the city putting in another 100. Or more. Same for the suburbs that are thinking about putting in the cameras.

Yes, we’re supposed to feel sympathy for motorists who race through red rights, as if they’re a picked-on species that is being victimized by the money-hungry Daley administration.

It’s not fair; it’s not constitutional, the ticketed public whimpers. Some lawyer, of course, has filed a class action suit, protesting—what?—a motorist’s right to speed through a red light undetected.

We’re supposed to believe that Chicago is behaving like those Georgia hick towns that ensnared passing Yankees (in Chicago’s case, suburbanites) in those legendary speed traps to feed the towns’ coffers. Or, we’re supposed to believe that cities are intentionally making the yellow caution light shorter to nab more riders.

We’re also supposed to believe studies showing that the camera worsens, not improves, traffic safety. I guess that’s based on the theory that the cameras are making motorists excessively cautious, slamming on their brakes and causing more rear-end collisions. So, I guess again, that we’re supposed to be against the cameras because tailgaters can’t cope with sudden stops. (Other studies, however, show a decline in the number of accidents; Chicago says accidents are down 30 percent and red-light running is down 60 percent at intersections covered by cameras.)

It’s all a plot to raise more money, camera critics say, pointing to the fact that Chicago’s revenues from fines at the present rate will top $50 million, which is more than a 40-percent increase over all the money collected in all of the past four years. Even more millions will be rung up from the 25 more cameras expected to be installed this year. Good; law-abiding taxpayers should be pleased that the tax burden is eased by lawbreakers.

Wait, there’s more whining: The city, some claim, is placing a disproportionate share of cameras in minority and poor neighborhoods, even though the argument can be easily refuted by glancing at a map of the cameras’ locations.

The cameras have some people so upset that they’re willing to invest $200 in global positioning system (GPS) devices that will alert them when they are approaching intersections known to be equipped with cameras. In other words, these fools are spending $200 to avoid a $100 fine, the maximum permitted by state law for being caught with a camera while running a red light. If that’s what it takes to get these dolts to slow down when they suspect the presence of a camera, so be it. Of course, they’ll still speed up when they think no camera is present—which is further evidence that more cameras are needed.

(Some devices come with the extra capability of warning drivers of approaching known speed traps. Others come with an additional feature of detecting the presence of police radar used to catch speeders. There used to be a device that motorists, fed up with speeders, could use to falsely set off these radar detectors, but the federal government said they were illegal and had to be taken off the market. Thus the irony: devices used to stymie other devices designed to break the law are illegal. But the devices designed to break the law are not. But that’s another story.)

All the carping about the camera’s unfairness and unconstitutionality is nothing more, when it comes right down to it, than an excuse to break traffic laws without getting caught. No one is stupid enough to admit it, but the truth of it is self-evident. I just wish these law-breakers would do us all a favor and stop whining about entrapment, violations of privacy rights and all the other red herrings.

Driving is a licensed activity in a public place. Because it is a public place, any expectations of privacy are ill founded. Because the government regulates driving, expectations that the government shouldn’t use a camera to enforce its laws in a public place are ridiculous.

The red-light camera is raising the same kind of objections we once heard when cities first started to use the Denver Boot to immobilize the cars of drivers who habitually flouted parking regulations and refused to pay their fines. All that their complaining accomplished was to make them justifiable objects of scorn and ridicule. Just like the red-light runners look today.